A NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S DESK:
Reflecting on 2020 2020 was a difficult and unpredictable year, despite the challenges Fisher House of Boston never wavered in our commitment to military families. When COVID 19 made its way to Massachusetts, Boston hospitals cancelled all elective surgeries and procedures. Even without elective procedures, we provided 2,317 nights of lodging in 2020 which is more than double what we provided in 2019 through our Boston Hotel program!
We are anticipating our numbers to grow even more in 2021. At this time, we are continuing to provide lodging for urgent and emergent visits and are ready for when it is safe for hospitals to resume “elective” procedures. When visiting was restricted at the VA Boston Health System (West Roxbury) the Fisher House on the property closed and began housing the medical staff (nurses and doctors) that work at the VA. When this happened, we worked with the VA physical Fisher House and placed any families coming for end-of-life care, or with special circumstances, into our hotel program and provided lodging free of charge, just 3 miles away.
Lastly, we began renting two apartments in the Longwood Medical Area, one block from Children’s Hospital, Brigham & Women’s and Dana Farber for military families that are coming to Boston for long term care, these families are often here six to nine months. We continue to create new relationships with hotels in the Longwood Medical Area as well as within walking distance of other hospitals in Boston such as MGH, Spaulding, and Tufts. These new relationships have allowed us to decrease our cost per night by half, we can now provide for even more military families with our budget stretching farther than ever before.
Fisher House of Boston has one mission and that is serving our military families when their journey has brought them to Boston for medical care. We proudly display the Platinum Seal of Transparency from GuideStar which rates charities on their work and transparency, both financial and about our programs functioning; Platinum being the highest level awarded. We Thank you for all of your support in 2020, we could not have done this without you! As the vaccine is distributed and we all continue to follow safety guidelines I hope to see you all at events in the near future.
We are still here providing for our military families, now more than ever! We aren’t going anywhere! A family’s love is good medicine; together, we are keeping families together.
– Jen DeLuca Executive Director Fisher House of Boston
